'Think artillery' when it comes to the 4-bore double rifles of Austrian gunmaker Peter Hofer. - The long, illustrious history of the 4-gauge rifle goes back to the days of the muzzleloaders first employed against the pachyderms of India and Africa. These guns reached perfection with the advent of the breech-loading cartridge guns. The standard load was 14 drams of black powder behind a 1,882-grain slug, which would give an approximate velocity of 1,200 to 1,400 feet per second. The immense unbridled power of a shoulder gun firing the maximum load for a ship's swivel cannon generated 300 pounds of...